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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Herbert Corey 

 A WOMAN OF MACEDONIA 



coast-line of King Nicholas of Montene- 

 gro, the patriarchal rnler of that wild and 

 turbulent expanse of naked hills which 

 one writer once graphically characterized 

 as Savage Europe. 



And savage indeed it is at first sight. 

 Crossing the steep heights which lead to 

 the interior, the smiling Adriatic is soon 

 shut out from view and the grim land- 

 scape of brave Crnagora shocks the eye 

 with its sense of utter desolation — a wild, 

 turbulent ocean of rock, rising and sink- 

 ing in angry gray waves flecked with 

 white, which seem to leap and rage and 

 battle together like a sea lashed by a 

 storm. 



At the Creation, so runs the Montene- 

 grin legend, an angel was sent forth to 



pick up the superfluous stones from the 

 earth's surface. He placed them in a bag 

 which burst as he was flying over Monte- 

 negro — and certainly the landscape bears 

 out the tale. 



THE HOME OF AN UNCONQUERABLE PEOPLE 



Yet amid these barren surroundings 

 have dwelt for 500 years an unconquer- 

 able people, who have preferred liberty 

 in this desolation to slavery in fat lands, 

 and whose bravery has enriched the le- 

 gends of mankind with tales of suffering 

 indescribable, and of courage illimitable 

 in defense of that freedom which "of old 

 has sat upon the heights." To preserve 

 their liberty a handful of valiant souls 

 fled into these well-nigh impenetrable hills 

 after the final overthrow of ancient Serb 

 glory on the fatal field of Kossovo, in 

 memory of which disaster the hat of the 

 Montenegrin bears to this day its band 

 of black. 



Here at the outbreak of the World 

 War ruled the last of the patriarchs — 

 Nicholas I — the one monarch of Europe 

 who, to my mind, really fitted his tradi- 

 tion. For more than half a century he 

 maintained the ascendancy of the Petro- 

 vitch dynasty, had twice doubled the area 

 and population of his realm as the result 

 of his personal leadership in war, granted 

 to his people a constitution, a ministry, 

 and a parliament — and yet remained him- 

 self the final source of authority as in 

 those days, not so far in the past, when 

 he sat in his chair beneath the plane tree 

 in front of the palace at Cetinje and per- 

 sonally heard and decided the grievances 

 of his peasants one against another. 



SERBIA, THE MOST FERTILE OF THE 

 BALKAN STATES 



That part of Jugo-Slavia which con- 

 stituted the Kingdom of Serbia before the 

 World War is the most fertile of all the 

 Balkan States, and, in addition, possesses 

 water-power and mineral deposits of 

 large value. It was a land of no large 

 fortunes and of no abject poverty, owing 

 to a system of land ownership which as- 

 sured to every peasant his homestead. 

 It is a country, too, of no large cities (if 

 one excepts those populous Macedonian 

 towns which fell to her as the spoil of 

 the Balkan Wars) ; but it is filled with 

 numerous small and industrious farming 



